


the flood

by ell (amywaited)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cute, Existential, Existentialism, M/M, Time - Freeform, a study in eldritch shit, fluff!, lmao no its just me word vomiting a load of lame adjectives on a page with a couple of names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:33:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23797723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amywaited/pseuds/ell
Summary: “You’re beautiful,” he whispers, deep into Cecil’s skin like he can implant the idea and let it grow from the inside out, blooming bright and bloody. The clouds in his skin run away from him, Carlos realises, like they can’t let themselves get caught.“You are,” Cecil tells him, sounding like he’s speaking from several mouths. His eyes blink at different times, one purple and the other a smoky grey. Carlos can’t choose one to look at. “I hope we have an infinity.”“Everywhere is a liminal space,” Carlos says. “We’re on the brink of forever. And you’re beautiful.”
Relationships: Carlos/Cecil Palmer
Comments: 13
Kudos: 52





	the flood

**Author's Note:**

> title from [the flood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCHg5r6rFoI) by take that.
> 
> other contenders for the title were [yesterday once more](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTaWayUE5XA) by the carpenters and [right here waiting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_E2EHVxNAE) by richard marx.
> 
> heres some words.
> 
> now with some INCREDIBLE art by kurofae (and i am so impressed and awed and grateful), which you can view on [tumblr](https://kurofae.tumblr.com/post/616695817609363456/cecil-breathes-as-well-exhaling-slowly-and-then) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/kurofaeart/status/1255321545775501312?s=20)!

They sit in Carlos’s car, hands clasped across the centre console. The sky sets fuchsia and purple and green around them, bleeding a rainbow across the clouds. It sets Cecil’s face alight with an almost alien quality, one that makes itself at home on the planes of his cheeks like it belongs there.

Cecil asks: “Are you afraid?” like he’s not expecting an answer. This is one of those questions to be asked in the damp stillness of early morning, when you aren’t sure where night ends and dawn begins, and everything is forgotten once the sun is risen.

“Why would I be afraid?” Carlos whispers. He squeezes Cecil’s fingers across the centre console, like an abandoned act of comfort, dusty and full of mothballs. He can’t remember how to be close to someone.

“Night Vale is different,” Cecil says. It answers everything and nothing at all. The sky begins to melt into a dark shade of teal. Cecil’s eyes turn amber in the dusk. 

“That doesn’t mean I should be afraid of it,” Carlos says. “ _ Should  _ I be afraid of it?”

Cecil shrugs. The movement pulls at the shoulders of his shirt, a cream silk number that looks more befitting of a turn of the century lady, but still manages to mold to his body perfectly. “If you’d like to be. Fear is expected.”

“I don’t think I’m scared,” Carlos says. He’s not sure how much genuine truth the statement holds. Cecil’s chest rises and falls in a way that isn’t entirely human. He spends too long between each breath, like he keeps forgetting to take them.

“Aren’t you?”

Carlos shakes his head, moving so minutely it might as well have not happened in the first place. He lets the air settle around them before speaking again, quietly, so as not to disturb it. “Are you afraid?”

Cecil looks down towards his feet. Carlos tracks his gaze, drawing his eyes over Cecil’s sneakers, mismatched high-tops in clashing shades of red and lime green. “Yes.”

“What of?”

“Of this,” Cecil says, in such a way that Carlos can’t tell what he means. “Of us. Of you, of me. Of the sky, and this car, and the immediacy of it. Of the inevitability. Of it ending. Look out there, look at those stars. At the sky. You’ll never see that colour again. You’ll never see that star again. Not here. I’m afraid of that.”

“You’re afraid of the future?” Carlos asks. The clouds grumble above him, as if letting them know their displeasure.

“Who isn’t?” Cecil tries to say. It comes out slightly garbled, like the words got caught in a shredder before they were spoken. “I’m afraid of the passage of time. I can feel it.”

“You can feel time?” Carlos says. He taps his foot, taps his fingers against the back of Cecil’s hand. “You feel it?”

Cecil sounds mournful when he next speaks. “I feel all of it, Carlos. I feel time, and its passing, beginning, and ending. I feel the Earth spinning beneath me. I feel when you breathe, when your heart beats. I feel it all.”

Carlos stays quiet. Cecil isn’t done, he knows.

“It’s like saying goodbye to things that haven’t even happened. To things that might never happen. Everything comes with a price, that much I know,” Cecil says. “But some things have much too high a cost. Who deserves this responsibility? No one should own this authority over human life.”

“What do you mean?” His breath is coloured orange, warm and soft and so deceptively inviting. Carlos can see it as it moves, curling out and around Cecil. 

“The human condition,” Cecil says. Another non-answer. “We have no authority over life or death, and yet here I stand. Defiant in the face of the natural order of being. What consequences should one draw from this?”

“You’ll do the right thing,” Carlos tells him. He hopes it’s enough.

“And how should one determine the right thing?” Cecil asks, “another question of the moral ambiguity of humanity. How is the right thing to kill one to save another? For the greater good, or for my greater good? Are they one in the same, or am I inadvertently damning hundreds of people to a fate they did nothing to earn?”

“You’ll do the right thing,” he says again. It’s stronger this time, tugging like a mantra, in time with his pulse.

Cecil sighs. He lifts his feet and puts them on the dashboard. The setting sun hits the sole of his sneakers, and Carlos thinks if they stay for too long, his car will begin to smell of melting plastic. “What’s right?”

They’re silent for a long while. The sky turns teal to fuchsia to purple to navy, with streaks of green and pink that seem to twist under Cecil’s watchful gaze, moving with every flick of his finger. “What’s wrong?” Carlos says eventually. The stars seem to exhale above them, sighing in time with the wind.

It’s enough. Cecil breathes as well, exhaling slowly and then all at once. His breath rushes to embrace Carlos, and he thinks he’s never paid so much attention to the expulsion of oxygen from one’s lungs before. Cecil makes it beautiful, like a dance that no one quite knows the right steps to, like a brush with death and a near miss. Cecil makes everything beautiful, this much Carlos knows.

The spell breaks. The stars are revitalised, they exist with a new type of energy, but the nebulae that swirl around them retreat back into Cecil’s skin, burning up his neural pathways to make space for their own. Carlos can’t help but trace over one of the streaks of colour left by space rock and ash.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers, deep into Cecil’s skin like he can implant the idea and let it grow from the inside out, blooming bright and bloody. The clouds in his skin run away from him, Carlos realises, like they can’t let themselves get caught.

“You are,” Cecil tells him, sounding like he’s speaking from several mouths. His eyes blink at different times, one purple and the other a smoky grey. Carlos can’t choose one to look at. “I hope we have an infinity.”

“Everywhere is a liminal space,” Carlos says. “We’re on the brink of forever. And you’re beautiful.”

Cecil’s breath comes at a regular pace. His monstrosity reduces itself, shrinking back into the darkest part of his being. Carlos could reach in and pull it out, removing it like one would remove a rotten core.

“Forever,” Cecil repeats. He holds the word in high regard, Carlos can tell, by the reverent way he says it, like it means more than it does. He nods slowly, like he’s promising something to himself. Carlos could only wish to be included, but he supposes looking in like an outsider is better than anything he ever hoped. To see Cecil, to exist with him, to exist together, just being. It’s more than good, it’s more than enough.

Forever. The sky is purple and stars blink between ice white and gold. Cecil’s face suits shadow, and moonlight, and everything in between. His lashes cast long, sloping shadows across the dashboard, and the glitter on his watch sends refractions of light bouncing along the roof of the car. Carlos can almost feel them, brushing up against his skin like extensions of Cecil himself.

Forever.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what u thought of this mess of a thing. its literally 1.2k of word vomit! but i wanted to write something anyway.


End file.
